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ITS United Kingdom announces its 2017 award winners

The 2017 ITS-UK award winners have been honored at a recent event in Birmingham hosted by society president, Steven Norris, with one prize shared by two people, while one organization won two awards.

Clearview Intelligence won both the UK Scheme of the Year and the Forward Thinking Award for Innovation, along with its partners Transport Scotland, Amey, BEAR (Scotland), and Edinburgh Napier University, for the Sheriffhall Roundabout: Mitigating Lane Transgression with the Intelligent Road Stud project. The scheme involved introducing multiple LED intelligent road studs to guide motorists through the key six-arm roundabout on the A720 Edinburgh City Bypass. The roundabout handles upward of 42,000 vehicles a day, and it is the only at-grade junction on the City Bypass, with the resulting high traffic volumes leading to it often being heavily congested. The ITS-UK judges agreed the scheme represents a significant innovation in the management of lane discipline on roundabouts and can be readily replicated on similar junctions to improve safety.

There were two winners of the Young Professional of the Year award. Robert Burns, a consultant at Mouchel was praised for operational safety workstream on the high-profile M1 J28-J35A smart motorways scheme, through the construction and initial operational phases, and the delivery of the comprehensive and innovative approach to the monitoring of smart motorway schemes.

Siddartha Khastgir is one of the UK’s youngest chartered engineers at the age of 26. He is currently a PhD student, but before taking this role at the University of Warwick, he had already achieved considerable success in automotive engineering. In his current research, he is developing new methods and knowledge necessary to test autonomous vehicles to ensure their dependability and to make them commercially viable, and is consequently accelerating their introduction.

There was also an honor for the driving force behind ITS-UK, its secretary-general, Jennie Martin, who was the recipient of the Neville Rees and Peter Hills Award for outstanding personal contribution by an UK ITS professional. The award was in recognition of Martin’s near 20-year career at the society, including more than 12 years in her present role. The judges agreed that in this time, ITS-UK has gone from strength to strength and maintained its stability. Today, the organization has 31 foundation and 107 corporate members and successfully operates 20 members’ interest groups.

The judging panel decided that Martin’s personal contribution to the success of ITS-UK was down to her strong organizational abilities, a warm and outgoing personality, and her dedicated and professional commitment to the organization. She has helped nurture other national associations and has become a high-profile international ITS leader, having chaired the European Network of ITS Nationals (27 organizations) with distinction, and continues to participate as a member of the coordination committee.

Receiving her award, Martin said, “As the first woman to win this award, I accept it on behalf of all the women working in ITS. This honor is humbling, and I also accept it for the whole of ITS-UK. All the members are so supportive, and it wouldn’t have happened without them.”